Till I found this recipe from Mummy Tong, a Dayrean I follow. After reading her post, I was determined to make it.

I took some liberties with the amount of salt and also omitted one ingredient as I couldn’t find it. Also, this recipe is enough for TWO 8″ x 8″ tins. That’s too much for two people but it didn’t occur to me till much later lol.

Ingredients

(A)

2 pieces or 100 gms Lap yok or Chinese bacon of long chinese waxed sausages (lapcheong), soaked in hot water and diced

100 gm of lapyok or Chinese bacon (I didn’t use this as I couldn’t find it), diced

#9 – On low heat, keep on stirring till the mixture become sticky and lumpy. This process is quite fast.

#10 – Now add the chopped spring onions and mix in.

#11 – Scoop mixture into an oiled tin and cover with aluminium foil. Steam on medium heat for 45 minutes.

#12 – Chinese radish cakes, DONE! Sprinkle with (D).

#13 – Nice eaten steamed (dang good with a dollop of sriracha) but you can cut them out into cubes and fry them up with some chinese salted vegetable (choi bou) and bean sprouts too, which is what I am going to do for lunch today :D

By the way, buy this radish…not the tiny red ones ya. Grate till you die hah!

This is a recipe from Ben O’Donoghue and I was THRILLED with the results. I made a few changes, things like changing saffron to tumeric (too expensive), getting rid of mint leaves (couldn’t find any) and conveniently forgetting bay leaves (old age). Yet, the biryani was absolutely delicious!

# – Made it for a family dinner.

For the rice:

300-500 grams of beef steak, thinly sliced

70 grams of tomato puree

A pinch of tumeric powder

50 ml of milk

500 grams of basmati rice

1 cup of coriander leaves, roughly chopped

A pinch of salt

For the marinade:

5 cm of ginger, peeled & grated

10 garlic cloves

3 long chillies, roughly chopped

20 grams of papaya, peeled and roughly chopped

2 tablespoons of cooking oil

Juice of 1 lemon

1 tablepoon of tumeric powder

For the spice mix:

100ml of vegetable oil

3 onions, thinly sliced

2 teaspoons of cardomom pods, bruised with the back of a knife

1 cinnamon quill, broken

2 teaspoons of cloves

# – First, dump all the ingredients for the marinade in a blender except for lemon juice and tumeric powder. Puree the mixture.

# – Pour it out then add the lemon juice.

# – Stir in the tumeric powder.

# – Add in the sliced beef and stir to ensure the beef are evenly coated with the marinade. Set aside while you continue with other tasks.

# – Prepare the milk in a jug and add the tumeric powder and a pinch of salt, let stand for about 20 minutes.

# – In the meantime, boil the basmati rice in salted water for 6-8 minutes.

# – Then drain the rice.

# – Now, to start with making the spice mix. Fry up 2/3 of the thinly sliced onions till brown (confession: I over fried mine a bit :P). Set aside.

# – Fry the remaining onions with the cardamoms, cloves and cinnamon quill.

# – When the spices are fragrant, throw in the marinaded beef. Reserve the marinade.

# – As soon as the beef are browned, pour in the tomato paste.

# – Followed by the rest of the marinade reserved earlier. Stir to combine.

# – Next, pour 1/3 of the drained rice over the meat mixture.

# – Then throw on some coriander leaves.

# – Cover with more rice and then a layer of the fried onions. Repeat until no rice’s left.

# – Pour in the milk mixture all over the rice.

# – Cover and stick in a preheated oven at 170 degrees celcius to bake for 15 minutes. This will allow the marinade at the bottom to steam the rice and flavouring it at the same time :D